Drayton_Evolution of a Vampire

by Tony Bertauski

  It took six months to walk from Mt. Hood to the Lowcountry, but it wasn’t exhaustion that weighed on Drayton. Blake Barnes was insane, no doubt. His personality was split in two, one side feeding on the other. He heard voices and couldn’t take it. Maybe if Blake lived another couple hundred years he would’ve understood his insanity. His thoughts would’ve died out with understanding. After all, it took Drayton two hundred years to understand his own dysfunction and find peace. Humans didn’t have that luxury.

  But there was no guarantee he would have found peace.

  Drayton didn’t murder Blake Barnes. He only took the last few moments of his life. He showed no prejudice – fat, skinny, black, white, republican, democrat – he took from them all. They often mistook him for the Angel of Death, but Drayton wasn’t sure what he was. Maybe he was Death and no one told him. He just knew he’d lived so long he couldn’t remember when, where, or how his life began. Or why.

  Tell my family I’m sorry.

  There was a time when he ignored all last requests but figured he owed his victims something for taking the last of their life, didn’t he? He hated to call them victims, but that’s what they were; they were all victims. The essence he craved was a silky energy that permeated every human being. He could absorb it just being near them, leave a man, woman or child an empty shell. It wasn’t like the old days when he tore out their throats and devoured them as they begged and pleaded. Back then, he ignored them, even laughed. That was how the whole vampire legend started. But Drayton didn’t have fangs or hide from crosses. He didn’t know what he was.

  Even still, they were all victims.

  He honored requests for a reason. Atonement. But if he got honest, drop dead on your knees honest, he did it because he wasn’t really sure what happened to the victims after he took their essence. If Drayton died like them, would he go there, too? He wasn’t human, not really. But did he have a soul? And if there was a God, Drayton figured he would have plenty to atone for. There wasn’t a lawyer alive that would defend him. Nor should they.

  He’d sent millions of people to the other side and had yet to see evidence of heaven or hell. If there was, so be it. He didn’t ask to be born. He didn’t want to live and live and live. He didn’t atone so that he could go to heaven or avoid hell. He atoned because he believed there was a balance in the universe. He atoned because that was the order of things.

  When the sun had fully risen, a mud-spattered truck roared past him, close enough the side view mirror nearly clipped him.

  Drayton started down the dirt road

  IV

  Aaron Towgard thought he might’ve hit the guy. He didn’t want to kill the asshole, just fuck with him.

  The dogs were boxed in the back. Aaron’s little brothers fought over the radio. He didn’t have time to take any of these idiots home. He was told to pick the check up at noon and not a minute later. He’d dicked around all morning and now it was damn near one o’clock.

  He about took out a line of mailboxes thinking of an excuse to tell his old man, but then he turned the corner and, what’d you know, there was ole Bo closing up the mailbox. Today was his lucky day. Bo always managed to avoid Aaron, but there was nowhere to hide this time.

  Aaron locked up the front tires and stopped inches from the mailbox. Bo jumped in the ditch, falling against a pine tree. The dogs yapped. “Shut up!” Aaron stepped out.

  His brothers started climbing out. He told them to get back in the truck and pushed his hair under his hat.

  “Hand me the check, Bo.”

  “It’s in the mail box.”

  “I know where it’s at. Hand it to me.”

  “If you want it,” Bo said, “get it. I’m no delivery boy.”

  “You are if I say you are.”

  Bo plucked his white t-shirt nervously, then started back down the private drive.

  “I’ll let the dogs loose,” Aaron said. “Give your horses a run. Summer heat and all.”

  “What?” Bo turned, put his arms out. “You want me to come over just to hand you the check?”

  “Now that tone right there isn’t helping you, Bo. It’s down right disrespectful. And you’re irritating the shit out of me. Now be a good delivery boy and do as you’re told.” He jabbed at the mailbox. “Deliver the fucking mail.”

  Bo heaved a stick into the trees, cursed under his breath. He yanked out an unstamped envelope and slapped it in Aaron’s hand. “Erica wouldn’t be impressed.”

  Bringing up Aaron’s ex-girlfriend hurt worse than a boot to the sack. Bo knew that. He also knew it was better to leave a hornet’s nest alone but sometimes you just wanted to see what was inside. Aaron snatched his skinny wrist before he could turn away.

  “What’d you say?”

  Bo tried to pull away. Aaron yanked and twisted in one fluid motion, throwing Bo into the truck. He cranked his arm up his back and ground his face into the muddy hood. The horn blared in their ears. Aaron’s little brothers bounced on the seat and he told them to cut the shit. His head was ringing.

  “Next time I take the change out of your ass.”

  He tossed him on the road. Bo wiped the mud off his lips and started to get up. Aaron planted his boot in the middle of his chest. If he had more time, he’d sling this weak piece of shit through the trees. Maybe set the dogs on him instead of the horses, get his heart racing, scratch him up a little.

  “You get your jollies from this?” Bo said.

  Aaron stepped on his chest. He snerked phlegm to back of his throat and let a it hang off his lip. Bo shook side to side. The tobacco-specked hocker rolled off in slow motion, stretching on a string. Bo twisted and squirmed. Aaron dropped the payload on Bo’s shaved head.

  “Fuck you,” Bo said.

  Aaron looked up at the sun. He was already in the shit. It wasn’t going to matter if he went straight home now or in another hour. He could make it worth it.

  “Fuck me?”

  He reached for the little bitch’s ear, all set to drag him across the road like his momma used to do in church when his stomach tightened. An involuntary knot twitched inside, like the feeling he got when his daddy stormed red-faced into the room. The dogs felt it, too. They went stone silent.

  Something was in the woods.

  Maybe Annie was coming down the drive with a rifle. Was she hiding in the trees? He rubbed his chest, could feel the crosshairs. Aaron walked to the edge of the road, looked through the trees. Bo stood with a muddy boot print on his white shirt, looked dumbly past the truck. Someone was a hundred yards down the road. It was the guy Aaron buzzed on the way here. Each step he took shook the knot in Aaron’s stomach that was now the size of an orange. Cold sweat broke across his forehead and the knot broke open like a foul egg.

  Aaron puked.

  Grits and eggs and gravy splattered like a bucket of mud. He put his hands on his knees, strings of spit draining in a puddle of vomit. Another wave drove him to his hands and knees until there was nothing left but thick, green slime. His little brothers didn’t honk the horn. They didn’t tell him to get up and kick the guy’s ass. The dogs didn’t make a sound.

  A well-worn pair of boots stopped inches from his fingers. Aaron wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Still on his knees, he rose up straight and proud. It wasn’t no guy walking down the road, it was just some black kid no older than he was.

  Aaron cleared his nostrils and looked up. “You lost?”

  “You should go home and rest.” He spoke with a strange dialect, like he’d mixed Spanish and good old American. But underneath it was a Southern flavor—the twang of a home-cooked meal—just diluted many times over.

  Aaron slowly straightened his hat. Nothing made a sound, not the dogs or bugs or wind or nothing. Aaron had been in situations like this. He was already in the shit with his daddy and this might get him out of it. After all, this unlucky fuck didn’t know where he was and Aaron was going to straight it out. He was more than his daddy’s delivery boy.

  He coul
d handle shit, too.

  Aaron feigned sluggishness when he stood and wiped his mouth. He turned like he was going to the truck. He didn’t need his gun to scare this kid white. Old fashioned man power was all. With his hand already up, with his hips turned, he would strike. In a single, swift motion, he balled his fist and turned his hips.

  But his hand didn’t move.

  The muscles along his back tightened like 240-volts had been rammed up his ass. It was moments later that he could see again. He was on his knees, hands in the puddle of vomit, greasy bile pushing between his fingers. The kid had by the neck, pinching nerves that screamed down his legs. Panic swept through his belly and slammed into his balls. Belly.

  “Move on.”

  When Aaron could feel his legs again, he stumbled to the truck. His brothers stared out the window. He put the truck in gear and trenched the sandy road on his way out. In the rear view mirror, he was white and pasty. And the truck was starting to stink something fierce.

  V

  DRAYTON KNEW A THING or two about hunting.

  He didn’t need a bow, knife or rifle. Come, fear. Fill the belly. Aaron Towgard’s body obeyed, dumped adrenaline into the blood stream. Ernie just lost his appetite, but Drayton pushed harder on the boy. He emptied his guts and his bowels at the same time.

  Drayton showed mercy. Maybe it was a mistake. The boy didn’t think of it as mercy, but an opportunity. He wasn’t accustomed to losing a fight. Like most simpletons, he believed real pain was meted out with skin and bone. Pain was delivered through the nervous system. No need to swing a fist. He squeezed the boy’s radial nerve below the elbow. The shock overwhelmed him. Drayton gave him time to recover, then pinched his brachial plexus near the base of his neck and introduced him to raw pain. He was a believer after that.

  Bo picked at his shirt on the side of the road, breathing through his mouth while the truck’s muffler faded down the road. “Who are you?”

  “Drayton.”

  “You know where he’s going, Drayton? He’s going right back to his daddy’s house.” Bo picked at his shirt faster, not letting it fall to his chest before he picked it again. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you showing up and all, but I ain’t sure it’s going to help.”

  “I’m looking for a place to stay.”

  “I, uh...” He studied Drayton’s face—the thin lips, and deep, black eyes—and couldn’t remember what he was saying. Drayton took the opportunity to calm the boy’s nerves with a thought, to slow his heart and cool his flesh. When he stopped picking his shirt, Drayton looked away.

  “Your home is a bed and breakfast, is it not?” Drayton asked.

  “Uh.” Focus returned. “We haven’t had anyone stay in a while, but yeah.”

  “I need a place to stay.”

  Bo looked him up and down. “You live around here?”

  “From out of town.”

  “Visiting family or something?”

  “Could see your quarters?”

  Bo drifted back into his eyes, again. Drayton looked away, repeated the question. Bo shook his head, then nodded. He started down the shady drive, toeing the strip of stringy weeds growing between tire tracks. They walked for a full minute before they reached the end. Bo suddenly turned around.

  “My name is Bo.”

  Drayton considered his extended hand, thought twice, then shook it. His hand felt cold as well water in December. Bo shook back with a strange look but didn’t comment. He wiped his hand on his leg and walked around the bend. An old house sat on columns of brick pillars, the white paint peeling off the walls. Brown fences, paint peeling just the same, were beyond the house along with several paddocks filled with horses. Massive crape myrtles with sinewy trunks grew in the open, pink blooms poking through Spanish moss. Further back, live oaks reached out from the surrounding trees, their branches ancient and flexing. A wooden fence stretched between the barn and the house, a few of the boards hanging. Drayton dragged his feet through the tall grass. The smell of horse manure filled the humid air.

  “You can go wait on the porch and get out of the sun if you want. Mama will be home any minute. She’ll get you set up.”

  Bo went inside the barn. A tractor sputtered. An old quarter horse stuck his head out of one of the stalls, sniffed the air as if feeling Drayton’s eyes on him.

  The frilly curtains dropped on one of the house windows. They were faded, almost yellow and nearly transparent. A shadow passed inside. Drayton climbed the wide steps to the porch wrapping around the house and peered inside. Someone moved in the back, disappeared around the corner. Drayton sat on one of the rocking chairs weaved from grapevine and bended saplings beneath a ceiling fan that pushed the heat around but not the flies.

  All the horses were looking at him.

  VI

  There was a boy on the porch.

  Annie thought he looked familiar, but she hadn’t slept yet. This time of day played tricks with her eyes, so Annie stopped the car and viewed him like she did everyone else on her property. She threw the car in park and let the air-conditioner blow. The car was the only reprieve from summer. She adjusted the vents, listening to the belts squeal and studied him. His skin was unnaturally dark. Most African-Americans she knew were brown-skinned. This kid was black. He didn’t look up, just sat rocking in her grapevine chair.

  Bo ambled through the long grass. Annie turned the car off and got the groceries out of the back seat. “He’s looking for a room,” Bo said.

  “Where’s his parents?”

  “He’s just visiting, says he’s by himself.”

  He was still looking down when she stepped on the porch. She didn’t trust people that couldn’t look her in the eye, but he did it in a way of respect, like he wouldn’t dare challenge her for control. A high school kid looking for a room? Hardly seemed right, but Annie was on her own when she was about the same age. She knew what it was like to scuffle.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling she’d seen him before.

  VII

  There was shouting inside the house.

  Bo was explaining. The shouts turned to murmurs. We need the money. That was the trump card. Although Annie was the only one arguing otherwise, even she couldn’t over play that one. They needed money.

  Drayton suggested with a thought that Annie forget she’d seen him at the Waffle House, otherwise this would all be too suspicious. He looked innocent enough, but plenty of good predators do. And Drayton was the greatest predator of all. If they knew what he was, there would be no room available, end of discussion. Not like that would matter.

  He rocked silently, watching the shadows creep across the yard. The horses grazed, occasionally looking at Drayton. There was something comforting about the scene. He explored his memories to see if he had been here before. He could remember back a hundred years like yesterday, but after that the memories were long-past ghosts of another life, like an old man remembering the thrill of a first kiss. Try that when you’re a thousand years old. Or however old he was.

  The screen door smacked against the wall and clapped back in the door frame. Annie carried a leather book and sat on a porch swing. She opened the ledger on her lap and tapped her pencil. She plied her Waffle House customers with Southern charm the same way she’d sweeten a biscuit with jam. But on her property, she carried her heritage like a stick. Don’t tread on me.

  “You got a name?”

  “Drayton.”

  “That’s your birth name?”

  “That’s a nickname.”

  She slowly flipped the pencil and erased her entry. “I need your birth name.”

  “Drayton will do.”

  “You don’t understand, young man. I need your birth name.”

  Drayton’s birth name was probably the only thing he remembered from the early days. He didn’t want to forget it because someone gave it to him, even if he couldn’t remember where it came from or who gave it to him. He didn’t use it often because, quite frankly, no one cared for foreign
ers in America these days. Nor did they care for funny names.

  “Nassfau.”

  Annie scribbled in the book. “You’ve got a last name, don’t you?”

  “Rauttu,” Drayton said. “Nassfau Rauttu.”

  “Let me see an ID.” She looked over her wire glasses, sprigs of kinky gray hair around the frames.

  “I don’t have identification.”

  Annie narrowed her eyes, rethinking the whole thing. Yeah, they needed the money, but what good would it do if he caved her skull in. She had enough people trying to hurt her. Drayton let her look deep into his eyes. She fought the temptation, like everyone did, but soon found herself soaking in his soothing glance. It allowed him the opportunity to see inside.

  He detected something all mortals shared in common, something found on battlefields. She was dying and didn’t know it. A tumor. He took a short whiff. It was small, just forming. She had plenty of time, two years, maybe three, before it would start affecting her memory and balance. It was hard to tell, so many variables. There was no sense in telling her, she was better off living in this moment than worrying about it. And, judging by the wrinkles around her mouth, there was plenty to think about already.

  Drayton looked away. Annie blinked quickly, tears forming. She composed herself, writing the word slowly.

  “Rauttu?” she said. “You Chinese or something?”

  “I have some Chinese in me.” Drayton grinned so faintly his lips barely moved. “Drayton’s actually my middle name,” he said. “If you want to write that down.”

  “Well Drayton may be a Southern name, but it don’t make you so.” She turned the pencil over, erased the last name before adding the middle name. “Nassfau Drayton Rauttu.”

  “Drayton.”

  “All right, Drayton. How many nights?”

  “A week. Maybe longer.”